When the comparison is raised, O’Leary allows that they’re both good businessmen, and owe their U.S. TV success to the same man, Mark Burnett—the executive producer of The Apprentice and Shark Tank—but says that’s where the similarities end. The Montreal-born son of an Irishman and a Lebanese-Canadian woman isn’t interested in building walls. And he isn’t shy about telling his prospective party that niqab bans and “barbaric cultural practices” snitch lines are why it lost the last election. “It’s a huge mistake to think you can ever divide Canadians on racial issues,” he said, repeatedly, in Ottawa. “Stephen Harper tainted the Conservative brand when he did that.”
O’Leary has, however, absorbed some lessons from Trump, Rob Ford and other populists about the virtue of having a simple theme and sticking to it. “All I give a s–t about is jobs, jobs, jobs,” he says. His quote-ready rants about Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau always have the same underlying thesis: that government regulations and interventions won’t help grow a struggling economy. More.

To avoid unnecessarily wasting anyone’s time, I am going to assume that this doesn’t really represent O’Leary (no known relation to this author, incidentally).

Maclean’s (is it government-funded at this point?) needs us to believe that a historic shift like the Trump candidacy in the States can just incidentally get started by some loud rich guy, between trophy wives. Sure.

Let’s start by looking at what we already know briefly and then come back:

First, big dying media and highly paid consultants were dead wrong. Trump won the GOP nomination quite easily. And political correctness did not matter in the least.

The pundits could only have been so wrong about big stuff like this if they were being paid to overlook and/or misrepresent fundamental facts.

How about: Neither historic party (nor their Canadian equivalents, I suspect) represents its historic constituencies any more. The Democrats are the party of grievance and entitlement and the Republicans are the party of global business that is willing to front the grievances and entitlements as long as their cost can be loaded onto the still-working or wants-to-work small taxpayer.

Donald Trump isn’t a Hitler. He’s just the guy who noticed all those people crawling around down there like ants. And I’d be surprised if things are ever the same again.

Second, governing elites don’t need Westerners nearly as much as they used to. They increasingly rely on automation, migrants, labour in unfree countries, and temporary foreign workers to get things done. The average North American is increasingly likely to be an expense rather than a source of income to government. Hence abortion, euthanasia, and net population decline. Note: “Helping professionals” should generally be classed with the dependents they serve.

Okay, now back to Kevin O’Leary. If he did want to be prime minister it’s hard to understand why he would want to be associated with the Conservative party, which will probably never govern again. Its traditional class, the independent professional, farmer, businessperson, etc., is shrinking, even as the grievance and entitlement class is growing. And the global business class can back anyone who keeps the locals under control while farming the world’s less fortunate.

He’d have to be the candidate for traditional Canadians who want to work again and do not want global business or the Supreme Court running our lives (and ending them).

Which reminds me: Trump’s crudity was a minor issue that dying media fell into the trap of making a major issue. It genuinely does not matter what some “offended” little-read harridan is shrieking, as part of a dying news organization somewhere. We’ve got that straight now, so let’s talk ideas.